“You don’t take a bag of cocaine to a psychiatrist.”
“You certainly don’t,” Harriet agreed. “I think you’d better stick to your dream of becoming a chef. You’re not cut out to be a spy, Sport.”
“Call me back, Harriet. I really have to put this casserole together.”
“Ten-four. Over and out,” Harriet said.
• • •
Ten minutes later, Harriet was in the yard behind the Feigenbaums’ brownstone, peering through her binoculars. She did not see Ole Golly. Dr. Morris Feigenbaum’s office was in the front of the house to the left of the stairs, but Harriet thought there was a possibility that drug dealers might be lurking in the backyard, waiting for the goods to be delivered. She had brought her heavy flashlight along, dangling from its special loop on her belt, even though it was daylight. If she needed to bash a drug dealer over the head, she would use the flashlight as a weapon.
But there was no one in the yard except, once again, a cat.
And once again Rosarita Sauvage came to the back door and called, “Here, kitty.” Today her hair was tied in two ponytails.
Harriet put down the binoculars and glared at her angrily.
“You’re a stupe and a liar!” she called.
The girl squinted her eyes and glared back at Harriet. “Why, H’spy?”
“You said you were shaving your head!”
Rosarita shrugged. “This is a wig,” she said. Then she picked up the cat, turned, and went back into the house, smoothing the cat’s fur and talking to it in a high, babyish voice.
IN NO WAY IS ROSARITA SAUVAGE WEARING A WIG. I CAN ALWAYS TELL WIGS. SYLVIA CONNELLY WEARS WIGS. THEY HAVE A LINE AROUND THE EDGE WITH NO JIBBERY PARTS OR LITTLE HAIRS. ROSARITA IS A LIAR AND A FINK AND HAS HAIR AND I AM VERY GLAD SHE COULD NOT COME TO MY BIRTHDAY.
Harriet snapped her notebook closed and replaced it in her pocket. With a hand on her weapon-flashlight, she made one more survey of the yard and the alley, checking for drug dealers. Nothing. Rien, as Ole Golly would say in French.
She could feel her shoulders lower into a slump. If Ole Golly were nearby, Harriet knew, she would glare and mutter sharply, “Posture.”
But Ole Golly had disappeared into the office of the psychiatrist/drug dealer, grasping her Saks bag of who-knew-what, and Harriet stood alone in an alley with her spy tools and her slumped shoulders, feeling like a failure and a stupe, and not yet even twelve years old.
She decided to go to church.
• • •
There were many churches in Harriet’s section of Manhattan. She had tried most of the churches at various times, dropping in on weddings on Saturday afternoons, usually in the spring and summer, when most weddings seemed to be held, and occasionally checking out the rummage sales and craft fairs toward Christmas.
She had decided that she liked the Catholic churches best. They had mournful statues, nothing overly cheerful-looking. Harriet was a little suspicious of churches where colorful banners appliquéd with flowers and multiracial children hung on the walls. She had nothing against either flowers or children; she just didn’t think they should be flapping from the walls of churches. It wasn’t solemn enough.
Once, she had wandered into an Episcopal church on a Saturday afternoon, hoping for a wedding—Episcopal weddings were usually pretty good, with many bridesmaids—but instead of a wedding, there had been a string quartet performing. Three men in dark suits and a woman in a long black dress were up at the front of the church with violins, a cello, and a viola. They were industriously playing a very long piece of music. Every now and then they stopped but then they would start again. No one clapped. One gray-haired man in a back pew was sound asleep.
Later she happened into the same church, also on a Saturday afternoon, and found, instead of the string players in their serious black clothes, a group of jazz musicians—one had a pierced nostril, Harriet could see—playing very raucous music and wearing unserious clothing. The people in the pews didn’t seem to mind. They were tapping their toes. Harriet sat down and listened for a while, but when the saxophone player put down his instrument and began to sing a song about “Oooh, oooh, oooh, what a little moonlight can do . . . ooo . . . ooo,” she felt shocked and worried, as if the saints in the stained-glass windows might begin to mutter and grumble. So she left.
Now, except for weddings, Harriet only dropped in on Catholic churches. There were many in her vicinity. She liked their names, especially the ones that began with Our Lady. Our Lady of Peace was on East Sixty-second Street and Our Lady of Perpetual Help on East Sixty-first. Harriet envisioned the ladies dropping by for coffee with one another, and maybe discussing the price of candles and the sad state of the homeless.
Perpetual help was what Harriet felt she needed, but the Perpetual Help lady was quite a long walk, and it was almost time for her snack. She knew that Ole Golly would be headed home from the Feigenbaums’ and would wonder where she was. So she visited, instead of a Lady, the nearby St. Joseph’s.
No one was home, but the door was unlocked and Harriet let herself inside the dimly lit sanctuary. She decided to light a candle, which was something even non-Catholics like Harriet were allowed to do. She had done it often, sometimes even with priests and nuns watching, and no one had ever frowned or shook a head or a finger at her in a scolding way. She always put some money into the box first.
Today she also carefully removed her belt of spy tools and laid it on a cushioned seat. It seemed inappropriate to light a Catholic candle while wearing a knife—even if it was only a Boy Scout knife.
Harriet deposited her money, eighty cents that she found in the pocket of her jacket, and carefully lit one small candle at the end of the row. The others flickered. Then Harriet knelt. She felt it was the thing to do.
Respectfully she said in a soft voice, “Ah, hello, God. I am looking for perpetual help but I didn’t have time to go all the way down to Sixty-first Street, even by subway or bus.
“I’m not a Catholic, I want to be honest with you about that,” Harriet added, “but I did put money in the box. Eighty cents.”
She waited a moment, on her knees, watching the candlelight, trying to decide how to begin.
“It’s hard to explain, but, well, I have this friend who is innocent of something. I am not certain what, exactly.” She spoke quickly because she didn’t know how much time she was allowed for eighty cents. Then she waited, listening, glancing up toward the high ceiling, hoping that somehow an answer would come.
“I would ask you to forgive her because I know that’s what you’re there for. But she’s innocent, I’m sure of it. She only feels guilty. And maybe she’s being manipulated by evil people. You’ve probably heard that before.” Harriet sighed, wondering what additional information she could provide to God.
Then she remembered something. “As long as I’m here,” she began, “I’ll tell you who you can forgive. Three people. Rosarita Sauvage, for one. Yolanda Montezuma. And Zoe Carpaccio. Every single one of them refused to come to my birthday party, God, and without good reason. Please forgive them for that.”
Her knees were starting to hurt. Also, she had begun to feel a little angry. “And listen, God? Would you also please punish them? Severely? I know it’s part of your job.
“And while I’m here,” Harriet added, “I’ll just mention that I would like lion bookends for my birthday next week.
“Ten-four. Amen. Goodbye.” She waited for a moment, thinking, and then added, “RSVP.” Then she stood up. She looked at her watch. It was time for her cake and milk.
Harriet retrieved her spy belt from the pew where she had left it. Carefully she rebuckled it so that the notebook and flashlight were at the back—it was uncomfortable when they dangled in the front; they bumped her thighs. She turned to leave. At the door she stopped, looked up, and confided politely, “That last part was French,” just in case God was not bilingual. “It means Please reply.”
Then Harriet left the church and he
aded home.
CHAPTER 10
God did not RSVP. Harriet waited three weeks but heard nothing. Rude, she thought.
Her birthday passed without a party. Her parents sent a check but it was not enough for the lion bookends, which cost $150. Cook gave her a gold-plated heart-shaped locket with a large red stone in the center, which Harriet wore for two days to be polite. At school her friends sang to her in the lunchroom, and Sport sent her a card with a cartoon of penguins on an iceberg, and inside, a bad but rhyming verse about the warmth of friendship.
Ole Golly gave her a volume of Emily Dickinson poems, and Harriet thought it was the best birthday gift she had received. It almost made up for no party and no lion bookends.
“Listen!” Harriet said to Ole Golly. “The punctuation is all funny but I can tell just what she means!” She opened the book and read:
The Red—Blaze—is the Morning—
The Violet—is Noon—
The Yellow—Day—is falling—
And after that—is none—
“That was Poem Four Sixty-nine,” Harriet said. “They all have numbers! Pick a number, Ole Golly. There are zillions.”
Ole Golly thought for a moment and then chose. “Six Thirty-one,” she said.
Harriet found it and began to read:
Ourselves were wed one summer—dear—
She stopped abruptly when she saw Ole Golly’s face. Six hundred thirty-one had been a bad choice.
“That wasn’t a very good one,” Harriet said, flustered. “Probably even Emily Dickinson had some bad writing days. But I really, really love the book, Ole Golly.”
• • •
Harriet started a new section in her notebook. She did it reluctantly because she had only a few blank pages left, and she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to use any of the remaining ones on religion. But she did have religious questions, and the best way to ponder questions, she had found over the years, was to do so in her notebook. So she turned to a blank page and wrote:
RELIGION
WHAT IS THE POINT OF RELIGION EXACTLY IF GOD DOES NOT ANSWER YOUR REQUESTS, OR EVEN RÉPONDEZ S’IL VOUS PLAÎT, EVEN IF YOU SPEND ALL YOUR MONEY ON CANDLES AND MAKE YOUR REQUESTS KNEELING AND WITH A WHOLE LOT OF COURTESY?
After she had written that, Harriet tried very hard to remember if she had said please during her moments in the church. She usually did. Her parents, her teachers, and Ole Golly all thought of Harriet as a highly courteous person.
Still, her request had not been granted. She had checked. And Harriet felt sure she had been courteous to God.
“How is Yolanda Montezuma?” she asked Sport later. “Has she had any serious troubles lately, as if a punishment of some sort had been inflicted upon her?” She thought for a moment about possible Godlike biblical language and added, “Or meted? Does it appear that someone has meted out a punishment?”
Sport shook his head. “She looks okay,” he said. “She never talks to me. I can’t even figure out why I’m in love with her. She’s only talked to me twice.”
“Only twice?”
“The first time was in the hall at school. That’s how we met. I dropped all my books, and I was picking them up when I saw these green shoes stop beside me. She helped me pick up a pencil that had rolled away.”
“You met over a rolled pencil? It sounds like a movie meeting. The hero and heroine have this situation that throws them together and suddenly their eyes meet, and that’s it. Love. I’ve seen lots of movies like that, Sport.”
“I know. Usually it’s in a bookstore or a library. Sometimes their eyes meet through a gap in a bookcase.”
“Did your eyes meet like that?”
Sport thought about it. It was a Saturday afternoon in November, and he and Harriet were walking along Eighty-seventh Street on their way from her house to his apartment.
“Well, our eyes sort of met,” he said. “She handed me the pencil, and I fell in love, just like that—ZAP—so I said, ‘I’m Simon Rocque.’ I guess, actually, I said thank you first. Then I said ‘I’m Simon Rocque.’ ”
“And you were already in love? It happened that fast?”
“Yes. Like a car, from zero to sixty. Zap.”
“And then what happened?”
“Ah, let me think. She stared at me for a minute. Then she said, ‘Yolanda Montezuma.’ That was it.”
“You said you talked to her twice, though.”
“Well, the next time was when I gave her the party invitation, Harriet. I said, ‘Here.’ Then I stood there waiting while she read it, and then she said, ‘Tell her no.’ ”
Harriet had counted. “So in your entire relationship, Sport, you have said six words to her, and she has said five words to you.”
Sport nodded.
“And you love her still.”
He looked embarrassed and nodded again.
“You’re pitiful, Sport. And she deserves punishment. I can’t figure out why God doesn’t see that. Cook says God is all-knowing, but as far as I can tell, God hasn’t punished Rosarita Sauvage yet, either. They are the reason I didn’t have a birthday party, Sport. They, and someone else named Zoe Carpaccio, who also remains unpunished, according to Ole Golly.”
“I would’ve come.”
“You did come, Sport. Remember, it was you and me and Cook and Ole Golly. It wasn’t a party exactly, but at least we had cake.”
“If I’d known it was a party, I would’ve brought a present, Harriet.”
“The only thing I can think of that I want,” Harriet told Sport, “is for Ole Golly to be the way she used to be.”
“She was always pretty grouchy,” Sport pointed out.
“Yes, but she was full of wisdom and she was very strong in her opinions. I think she was psychologically sound. But now—”
“Now what?” They had reached the Rocques’ building.
“Now she sighs and mutters and carries a little bag around all the time,” Harriet said. “She spends a lot of her time closed in her room. She takes naps. She says she’s unwell. And she doesn’t pay very much attention to me at all.”
At just that moment Harriet got a glimpse, just a glimpse, of a very familiar-looking tall woman enveloped in bulky tweed. She was on the next block, just turning a corner.
“Sport! Look!”
“Where?”
“I saw Ole Golly! We’ve got to follow her!” Harriet pointed to the corner and headed off at a brisk jog. “Stay close,” she said to Sport, “and try to be invisible. Blend.”
“Blend?”
“Into the woodwork. Especially now, as we turn the corner. We can’t let her see us.”
Carefully they edged around the corner of a small hosiery shop with a lot of fake legs wearing brightly striped tights in the window. Harriet peered toward the next block and got a glimpse of the familiar tweeds. Ole Golly was walking purposefully, as if she had a destination in mind but was not in a hurry.
Fortunately, on a Saturday, there were large numbers of people out and about in the neighborhood, and it was easy for Harriet and Sport to make themselves invisible. They ducked into a doorway for a moment when Ole Golly stopped briefly, entered a convenience store, and emerged with a magazine under her arm.
“What did she buy?” Harriet whispered to Sport. “Can you see? I think I need new glasses.”
Leaning from the doorway, Sport squinted at the magazine.
“Literary?” Harriet asked. “Or news, maybe?”
“I can’t get the title,” Sport said, “but it has a movie star on the cover.”
“No!” Harriet was shocked. “That’s completely out of character!” she said. “She’s having a breakdown, Sport. She disdains trashy magazines. She reads them only in waiting rooms.”
“Maybe she’s going to the dentist,” Sport suggested.
Harriet shook her head. “She goes to Dr. Van Pelt. His office is on the other side of town.”
“Maybe she bought it for someone else.”
“No, sh
e’d never do that. We went to tea once at Sylvia Connelly’s and later Ole Golly told me she was shocked to see a Cosmopolitan in the bathroom. Walk faster, Sport; we might lose her.”
Sport sped up and they continued to trail Ole Golly.
“Look!” Harriet whispered as they approached the corner of Eighty-sixth Street and Lexington Avenue. “She’s going to take the subway someplace! Do you have any money? I don’t.”
“Look! She’s changed her mind!”
It was true. Ole Golly had started toward the subway entrance. Then, after pausing for a moment, she seemed to make a decision. She stepped to the edge of the curb and looked down the street. She raised one arm as a signal.
“She’s taking a cab instead! Hurry, Sport! Get closer and see if you can hear what she tells the cab driver. I’ll lurk here so she doesn’t see me.”
With his head down, Sport made his way quickly toward the corner where Ole Golly was standing. She didn’t look his way. He walked beside a man in a dark green jacket as if he were with the man, as if they were perhaps father and son.
Good work, Sport, Harriet thought, watching him. Good spying maneuver!
No bag, Harriet noticed. Today Ole Golly was not carrying anything but her purse and the magazine she had just bought.
Sport stood on the corner as people waited for the light to change. He was very close to Ole Golly when a Yellow Cab pulled up and she got into it. When the cab pulled away as the light changed to green, Sport scurried back to where Harriet was waiting.
“What did you hear?” she asked eagerly. “Where is she going?”
“East Sixty-eighth, something something something something.”
“What do you mean, something something something something?”
“I couldn’t hear what she said after East Sixty-eighth. It was a lot of syllables.”
Harriet sighed. “Well, it’s a start. East Sixty-eighth. And we’re standing on East Eighty-sixth. Eighteen blocks. There’s a lot of traffic. Her cab might hit a lot of red lights. We might catch up with her if we walk fast.”
Harriet Spies Again Page 9